Greenwich beats Darien to reach FCIAC tennis final

Anthony Parelli

Updated 11:17 pm, Friday, May 23, 2014

STAMFORD -- Coach and player alike for Greenwich looked at the 2014 tennis season as a rebuilding year after losing six of its better players from a year ago, but after a 4-3 victory over Darien on Friday the Cardinals find themselves in the FCIAC title match.

"I'm really proud of our team as a whole," said Isabelle Janssen, who with Maitlyn Murphy won their doubles match 7-5, 6-3 to secure the Cardinals' victory at Chelsea Piers. "We really thought this year was going to be rebuilding, but we really played as a team and covered all of our bases with everybody playing in different spots and were able to make it happen."

An emotional coach Betsy Underhill echoed the sentiment while fighting back tears as she described a team that thrived all year off of its depth.

"I literally had no expectations," Underhill said of her preseason outlook. "I'm blown away right now; it was no one person -- not just doubles, not just singles, it was throughout the whole year everybody stepped up."

For Underhill, winning with a team that didn't have a superstar, per say, was more gratifying than relying on heavyweights to carry the team throughout the season as the Cardinals have done in years past.

"It's been a complete team effort, which makes it even more gratifying for me," Underhill said. "I've had superstars before that always carried the teams, and if they were off that day they were in trouble. This is from top to bottom a team effort, and its pretty exciting to go to the finals."

Janssen and Murphy ended up being the deciding match in the contest and were second-to-last to finish. The pair didn't know the score of the match, but judged from the crowd behind them that their outcome was important.

"I like it," Janssen said of her coach not revealing the situation. "It leaves just the right amount of pressure on us."

Underhill's decision to withhold information is a preconceived one, as she doesn't want to draw the players' focus from the task at hand.

"I never tell anybody," Underhill said. "They have enough pressure. They have so much pressure from the first ball they hit, I'm not going to add to it, my job as a coach is to take away pressure."

For Darien the situation was only too familiar, as the Blue Wave's lone loss in the regular season came on an identical 4-3 final against Greenwich.

"We lost to them the same way both times," Darien coach Davin Gebauer said. "They're good all the way through. They're a good team, well coached."

While losing is never a coach's goal, Gebauer was still happy with being able to compete for a shot at the FCIAC championship before heading to the state playoffs.

"We just talked about some of our goals at the beginning of the season, and that was to contend for the FCIAC championship," Gebauer said. "Which we did. We just came up a little short to a better team today."